


To The Grave

by iArgent



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, GET OUTTA MY GRAVES, Lucien to Molly, M/M, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Other, Pre Relationship, mention of blood but no graphic violence, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 20:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19709158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iArgent/pseuds/iArgent
Summary: Lucien is a constant issue in The Blooming Grove. Caduceus is glad to be rid of him, until it leaves him completely alone.Then Molly turns up in need of healing with no memory of the amount of times Caduceus has swatted him off the fence.





	1. Lucien

**Author's Note:**

> I remember joking about Caduceus's inadvertent Southern Belle vibes. So here's Some pre-Caddymauk crack.

Caduceus spent most days with his sister now. The last two Clay family members in The Blooming Grove.

They woke, cooked, drank tea, and cared for the gradually overwhelmed graveyard.

It was relaxing. Until it wasn’t.

“Hey! Fuck off Lucien!” Clarabelle screamed from across the way.

Caduceus stood and ambled over, the tiefling in tight black clothing and a manic toothy expression was halfway over a fallen branch leading into the graveyard.

“Oh, my dear Clarabelle, how are you? Do step aside the Tomb Takers seek something withi-ACK”

Clarabelle pulled her staff back from the devastating blow she’d dealt the cultist. “Didn’t work the first time, won’t work this time you absolute fucking fuck!”

She swung again, pink hair swinging behind her as she batted the tiefling off the fence with her next blow. “Outta our graves! Go on! Git!”

Caduceus heard the telltale scrabbling of Lucien scurrying away through the underbrush, invisible to sight.

“He just keeps coming back.” Caduceus offered.

Clarabelle, chest heaving and nostrils flared, staff clenched in her shaking fist, green stone spattered a little red shook her head “Goddamn cultists.”

Her little brother nodded in faux understanding “Lucien seems persistent, but he doesn’t bring his friends. So that’s nice.”

The taller firbolg tossed her hair “He’s fucking with us. Introducing himself all menacingly then trying to scrabble over the walls like a…like a plague rat! He’s so bad at it. He wants something here but it’s not important so he amuses himself tormenting us!”

Caduceus nodded along with her tirade. “He’s pretty irritating.” He wouldn’t say tormenting. For someone who wasn’t all that nice he broke up the monotony well. Caduceus actually liked seeing him sometimes. He wondered if the man would one day just ask for tea so Caduceus could find out what he wanted rather than hitting him with a staff like a common looter.

Clarabelle snorted, shaking her head again. “You take him next time. I wanna make sure you’re fine handling him and his ilk before I leave.”

The reminder made him sad. Soon he would be alone. “Sure thing.”

“Gotta teach you how to handle that bum leg.”

“I don’t think you get to insult my leg when you’re the one who broke it.”

It was three days to Clarabelle’s departure. Her knapsack packed in the house, a few teacups packed, leaving Caduceu’s only a couple. He made sure he had at least two, for if he ever managed to invite Lucien to tea.

Speaking of Lucien, Caducus swung as Clarabelle told him, sweeping his staff in an upward arc and feeling the heavy crack in his arms as the staff hit said cultist in the underbrush.

He listened carefully and heard the telltale scuttling of Lucien’s retreat, and stopped to polish the red off his staff, vaguely irritated. Lucien’s advances seemed almost clumsy and lighthearted. However his eyes gave him away. It was a ploy, he was playing at incompetence.

Clarabelle left three days later.

And then, Caduceus was alone.

Well, ‘alone’.

Lucien was ever present.

Slowly, Caduceus’s curiosity left in the face of the tieflings twisted expression. What once seemed almost playful Caduceus now saw as unnerving and a little malicious despite it’s unintentional hilarity. He felt like a field mouse being harried by a cat. Despite being larger in every way than Lucien who despite his aura was deceptively slight once he saw past the aura of danger.

“Git!” He shouted, swinging his staff as he’d seen Clarabelle do dozens of timed and smiled happily when Lucien did a flip backwards over the fence. “And don’t come back!”

But this time was different.

Lucien didn’t return.


	2. Mollymauk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caduceus learns a new name for an old enemy in a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Spirit fingers* tadaaaaa

The extra cups in the cupboard really grated on him. It had been…four seasons? And nobody had come to The Blooming Grove.

Caduceus woke, cooked, made tea, and tended to the rapidly overwhelmed graveyard. Some areas of fence were overwhelmed, his family was gone.

Caduceus even longed for Lucien to come back. His demented smile was weirdly missed. If only for the company.

A few raiders had popped up, a cultist or two, but nobody that screamed ‘Lucien’ and Caduceus let himself fall into a nearly bored complacency.

Boredom and frustration led to Caduceus taking tea in the yard. It wasn’t like there wasn’t plenty to do, or that Caduceus was ungrateful. He just sometimes, on days like today where the blight in the forest was strong and the animals were gone and the plants were quiet, felt the frustrated loneliness.

“Do you think there’s a way in?”

“I don’t fuckin know Nott!”

“Sheisse everybody calm down we need to-”

“Not to break up the yelling but-”

“I’ll just ask the plants to move.”

Caduceus hesitantly set his teacup down, the scent of blood heavy in the air.

A group of people started spilling over the fence as he watched. A firbolg woman passed an injured tiefling over the fence into a woman in blues arms, slight and fluid in his limpness.

“Oh. Hey.” He wasn’t quite sure where to start, this was…a lot.

A ragged looking man with fiery hair whipped around to make eye contact, blue eyes frantic.

“Are you a healer?”

After so long, social niceties were hard to find and Caduceus was aware that it would be a waste of time, so he just nodded and approached.

The woman in blue was sort of trying to press a bandaged hand to a deep injury, the goblin trying to help.

The dwarven woman and the firbolg woman were both doing seemingly, whatever was left.

Caduceus had them lay the tiefling down and began trying to dig through the bloody shirt to a horrific wound, healing it as best he could, which wasn’t much, not right now. “We’re gonna have to move him inside, it’ll be a few days.”

“Caleb, Beau, we don’t have a few days!” the goblin screeched “Not if we wanna catch up to-”

“Ja, ja, we know Nott, we know.” The red haired man, Caleb, seemed to be boiling over in stress as he helped shoulder the door open for Caduceus to drop the injured tiefling on a guest bed in the main room.

“What can I do?” The dark skinned woman asked, buzzing around him, a mess of frantic energy. “I need to help.”

A lot. These people were a whole lot.

“Uh, heat some water, the pot is there, well is outside.”

She was very fast, and was out the door before he could say much more.

“I hate to assume, but I’ve brought your tea.” The firbolg woman said, gently placing his tea set on the table. “Can I do anything for you?”

Caduceus shook his head and started delicately pulling at the tieflings clothing. “I just need to undress him, clean the wound and add medicine.”

“I can help.” The woman stated brightly, her hands were bloody like everyones. He wasn’t sure how the tiefling had a pulse yet when all of his blood seemed to be on the outside.

“Well, feel free.” Caduceus replied easily, ears pinned back a little in stress, a whole lot.

“My hands are smaller, I’ll help.” The dwarven woman offered quietly and joined him in unbluckling, lacing, and tying the tieflings convoluted outfit and tugging the clothing off.

“Oh wow.” Caduceus expressed involuntarily. He was very pretty, but mostly he was looking at the multitude of scars and tattoos. He seemed familiar somehow.

The dark skinned woman burst back in, putting the water over the little fire. “Anything else, can I do anything else?”

“Not right now.” He said slowly. “Uh, my named Caduceus. Caduceus Clay.”

The woman nodded, a little frantically. “Beauregard, just Beau.”

Caleb nodded from where he had sank, limply by the wall “Caleb Widogast.”

The goblin came over and started to fold the tieflings clothing, stressed “I’m Nott.”

“Not Caleb?”

The dwarf snorted “I’m Keg, shes Nott.”

Caduceus furrowed his forehead “Thank you miss Keg. But I know she’s not Caleb or Keg.”

Nott shook her head “N O T T” She spelled out.

“Ah.”

“I am Nila.” said the firbolg, returning from his shelf with a handful of herbs “I grabbed some things. If they’re wrong let me know.”

Caduceus eventually took a rag and began to mop up the tiefling. His eyes fluttered a few times, which Caduceus thought was terrible, he definitely shouldn’t wake up right now. As he mopped the tieflings face, he felt his ears pin back farther. “Lucien?” He murmured.

“How do you know that name?” Caleb snapped from the corner, struggling to stand.

Caduceus waved a big hand “He looks like someone I used to know, sort of.”

Caleb nodded hesitantly and sat back. But Caduceus never felt his eyes leave him.

The party moved on in the morning, vowing to return for their friend, Molly, he overheard. They said they’d pay him, offered to take him with them. Caduceus was going to take them up on it.

“Mr. Clay, we are your destiny, and you are ours.”

A sweeping declaration from the unexpectedly charismatic wizard was surprising, but welcome.

The group of five took off and Caduceus was left with almost Lucien.

He mopped his face, his chest, he healed him daily, smeared him with medicine, tilted him up and stroked his throat so the herbs in the tea would go down, so the broth he made would go down, so water wouldn’t drown him.

He’s wanted to have tea with Lucien one day, understand him, not like this though.

Five days later Luciens eyes opened as Caduceus cut and redid stitches once more, the old ones dissolving and warping under the tieflings internal heat, he wasn’t used to stitching up people he wasn’t related to.

“Hey there, beautiful.” Lucien croaked, and Caduceus felt a swell of irritation once again. “Where am I?”

“You know where you are.” Caduceus replied shortly.

Lucien looked confused, but he also looked weak, and his red eyes fluttered shut and Caduceus began to entertain the thought that maybe this wasn’t one of Lucien’s shenanigans.

Another day in, Lucien woke again. “So…What’s you’re name?” He rasped, a light accent tickling his words.

“Caduceus Clay.”

“Cute.”

Caduceus just looked at him for a little bit. He was very different then Caduceus remembered.

One more day and Lucien was awake for longer, bouncing back quickly, even though he was often short of breath.

“I’m Mollymauk Tealeaf, Molly to my friends.” He said, an edge of his old smile swallowed in a pervasive swell of continuous joy. He seemed so much happier.

“I remember you Lucien, you don’t need to lie.”

Molly’s eyes seemed to crystallize, sharpening and hardening, “No, I’m not him. Don’t call me that.”

Caduceus blinked “Okay.”

“He’s dead, this is my body now.”

“Are you possessed?”

“Possessed of a stunning personality.”

Caduceus snorted. “I and my sister used to hit Lucien with out staffs when he tried to crawl over the fence. He was terrible.”

Molly looked torn between laughter and confusion.

“I don’t think I need to hit you with my staff.”

Molly blinked “I mean, you could.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Nevermind.”

Caduceus packed up while he cared for Molly. And when a group similar in size but different in composition arrived to collect them, he was ready to leave. Nila was going to stay here, so he helped her change the sheets and wished her well.

There was another tiefling, a half orc, an aasimar.

But really all he noticed was Molly’s tail wrapping around his wrist when they sat together in the cart.

And Molly just never really let go, long after he healed, he refused to stop snuggling into the firbolgs side, tail wrapped up in long grey fingers.

Caduceus didn’t want much in life. He’d wanted to have tea with Lucien. Now he supposed he’d have to have tea with Molly.


End file.
